Sports
For our overseas friends, today is THE BIG DAY in America.
It’s “Super Bowl Sunday.”
It is almost a holiday. No–it’s a holiday. But we don’t admit it. Americans, I mean. Because that would be dangerously close to admitting the horrible truth.
That “Sports” is our religion.
Go on. Admit it. “Sports” is the true American State Religion.
But we NEVER say that out loud. It’s a stealthy religion.
I’m bitching about this because I had an epiphany. I saw that the reason for a lot of my unreasonable hostility to forums and gurus and organizations like IPMS is that I see these people as trying to turn MY hobby into a SPORT.
I don’t like that one bit. I’m anti-Sports. Sports, in my world, is a big phony excuse to practice toxic masculinity without having to pay the natural price that arises from being a jerk.
It’s a way to vent your gonads without ever being taken to task on account of your bad behavior. “Sports” is the ultimate example of what is wrong with America.
Now, I know that the rest of the world is a bit “sports crazy” and that this often revolves around something I’ll call futbol, but I’m talking, my friend, about the U.S.A. so you can just relax. It’s true that people riot in Brazil and wars start in Serbia over futbol, but that’s NOT “Sports.” In America, it’s not like a religion, it IS a religion. In The Bible Belt, I believe that a lot of church-goers have converted their church into their political affiliation, their Sporting affiliation into their church, and their political party into their quasi-militia/vigilance committee.
I know. It’s confusing.
Just keep in mind that “Sports” doesn’t teach honesty or integrity or compassion. In this country, it teaches dishonesty, deceit and cruelty.
It’s not okay. We teach our kids that cheating is OK IF YOU DON’T GET CAUGHT and we call it “competition.” It wasn’t capitalism that taught us to be a nation of creeps, it was Sports.
I hate the idea that my harmless little activity might be converted/absorbed/assimilated into the Sports/Borg Religion of this corrupt country and I don’t like it when it’s implied that I’m wrong because I don’t play “by the rules.”
It’s NOT a competition. I’m not involved in this endless obsession with “Sports.”
Fuck Sports.